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World Bank Director of Gender and Development, Jeni Klugman, has commended Rwanda for its efforts to empower young women who have not been privileged to have education

Klugman visited schools in Kigali that are part of the Adolescent Girls Initiative (AGI), a project supported by the World Bank. The schools are Gahaya links, which trains students in arts and handcrafts, and Gacuriro vocational training center which trains students in food processing.

Klugman lauded Rwanda’s drive for gender empowerment by mainly giving equal access to education to both men and women. “Rwanda is doing a great job in enabling women mainly in schools,” said Klugman.

She indicated that worldwide there still is a big gender gap in different sectors including labor even though women can play a great role in poverty reduction and called on leaders to make gender equality a corporate priority and remove discrimination.

Sam Barigye, the AGI project coordinator says that the young women are helped to save some income and acquire start-up funds and equipment once the complete their skills training in six months.

The two year project targets about 2000 young Rwandan women and 90 percent of the women have already been trained in various life skills to enable them to survive.